The Star of the Sea (56 page)

Dixon flipped open his reporter’s notebook and took out a dog-eared cutting. The holed newsprint was yellowed like a scrap of old lace, folded and creased too many times. Gently he opened it, so it wouldn’t blow away. A black border. Twenty-point type. The charcoal, monstrous glare of Frederick Hall: Murderer.

‘As you say,’ said Grantley Dixon. ‘Every man has his double.’

Mulvey blinked slowly but there was no visible sign that he was troubled. He never moved his hands from their resting point on the railing. They were small and white, like those of a girl. It was difficult to picture them doing what they had done. ‘What do you want?’ he muttered very quietly.

‘That might depend on what you want yourself.’

‘You would not like to hear what I want at this moment. It would give you a nightmare you might not forget.’

‘Perhaps we should tell the Captain there’s an assassin on his ship.’

‘Scuttle along to him, so. More luck if you do.’

‘You think I wouldn’t?’

‘I think a cringing whore like yourself would do anything in the world. And there’s all manner of things we could go telling the Captain. And other people, too, if you want them told.’

‘Forgive me, Mr Mulvey, I don’t get your meaning.’

He gave a brief, derisory snicker. ‘If one ship sinks, Buck, all ships can sink. I hope your Countess can swim as well as she rocks the boat.’

‘They don’t hang you for adultery, Mr Mulvey. They do for murder.’

‘Then get him if you’ve the guts. You know where I am.’ His eyes were gleaming with hatred as he grinned. ‘Run along, little boy. Before you get what’s coming.’

‘I mean you no harm.’

‘Get to Hell, you bitch’s melt. And suck my arse on your way. I’ve wiped better than you off the sole of my boot.’

‘I know about the guard. What you suffered at his hands.’

‘And you think what you’re doing now is different.’

‘I have no weapon.’

‘Only your pen.’

‘It doesn’t do quite the same damage as a rock smashing a face. But you can debate it with the judge at your trial if you like.’

Mulvey spat at his feet. Dixon went to walk away. The snap came after him, cold as a blade:

‘I’m after asking you already. What do you want?’

He came slowly back to his quarry and stood beside him.

‘I’m a reporter, Mr Mulvey. What I want is the story.’

The killer said nothing. His hands were in his pockets.

‘Your life in London. Why you did what you did. How precisely you escaped. Where exactly you went. Your name needn’t be included, but everything else. Otherwise I go to the Captain this minute.’

‘That’s the price nowadays. A story for a life?’

‘If you put it that way.’

‘And when we get to New York?’

‘I last saw you in Belfast eighteen months ago. They were putting you into your grave at the time. You gave me the interview a week before you died.’

The Captain appeared on the upperdeck, strolling with the cook. They seemed to be laughing as they looked up at the sails. He turned and gave a cheerful salute through a frail wisp of mist. Beckoning now. Waving them over.

‘Your decision, Mr Mulvey. Either way I get a story.’

‘Not Belfast,’ he murmured, and he pulled his coat tighter. ‘I’m buried in Galway. Beside my brother.’

Portside Near the Stern
— 3.15 a.m. —

‘What kind of man am I?’

‘A sick one, Merridith. That is all.’

‘An evil one, you mean. Lower than an animal.’

The surgeon touched Lord Kingscourt’s arm with professional gentleness. ‘One cannot see evil under the microscope. What one sees has a name.
Morbus Gallicus
. It isn’t a plague, and it isn’t a punishment. It does what we ourselves do every day.’

‘What is that?’

‘Everything it must, in order to survive.’

The flag flapped loudly and furled around the mast. Nearby, two aged beadswomen of steerage were hallowing the blessed glimmer of Coffin Island lighthouse:

Ave maris Stella, Dei Mater alma;

atque semper Virgo, felix caeli porta
.

‘What can I expect?’

‘We divide syphilis into four distinct stages. You’re nearing the end of the third stage now. The late latent phase, we call it.’

Merridith tossed his cigar butt over the rail. ‘And that means?’

‘The thing will have lodged in your tissue by now. Lymph glands too. There may be ocular involvement. Uveitis. Vasculitis. Papilloedema.’

‘You can give it me straight. No flannel required.’

The surgeon sighed and looked at his hands as though he resented them. ‘You will almost certainly lose your sight. It will happen quite quickly. It is happening now.’

‘Go on.’

‘After invasion it tends to colonise and multiply quickly. You’ll develop gummatous lesions – sores – all about your skin. Also on your bones and vital organs. We think it infects the outermost substance of the arterial coat. Basically eats it away.’

‘Eats it, you say?’

‘In a metaphorical manner of speaking.’

‘And then?’

‘Lord Kingscourt – you are upset. Naturally this is distressing. Really I –’

‘I want to know, Mangan. I am quite prepared.’

‘Well then – the nervous or cardiovascular systems are attacked. In the former case there can be quite severe personality changes. Perhaps even GPI.’

‘What is that?’

‘General paralysis of the insane.’

A memory of his childhood loomed up like a spectre. A madwoman in Galway city, screeching and tearing her clothes, displaying herself to passers-by. His nanny, Mary Duane’s mother, had tried to shield him from the sight; had hustled him away across the muddied street. An inebriation of terror. Jam on his hands.

‘There is no treatment?’

‘We can do a very little to relieve the symptoms with mercury. Certainly we need you not to deteriorate before reaching New York. You must rest completely for the next forty-eight hours.’

‘What is in New York?’

‘A private hospice for people suffering from your condition. I can arrange for you to be admitted as soon as we disembark.’

‘A pox-house I believe such places are called.’

‘No matter what they are called, the sisters there are kindly. There is also speculation in some of the literature – only speculation, mind – of hopeful developments with a new thing: potassium iodide. But it’s a little way down the road. And the results are extremely inconclusive.’

‘So nothing else may be done?’

‘If it was primary stage or even secondary, we might try to fight. And we shall, of course. But the chances aren’t good.’

‘How long do you reckon I have? At worst?’

‘Perhaps six months. It might be a year.’

Solve vincula reis, profer lumen caecis
,

mala nostra pelle, bona cuncta posce
.

A cresting wave threw a handful of yellow spray over the railing. Dense streaks of foam were smacking the barrier. He dried his eyes quickly with the back of his sleeve.

‘I should like to thank you for your courage, Mangan. Can’t be an easy thing. Situation like this.’

‘I am very sorry, sir. I wish I could offer more hope.’

‘No, no. Rather feel I should shake you by the hand. Not the executioner’s sin that he has to do his duty.’

‘May I ask if you’ve ever had a problem of this nature before, sir?’

Lord Kingscourt said nothing. The doctor spoke quietly.

‘I’m an old man, Merridith. I’m difficult to shock.’

‘When I was younger I contracted g-gonorrhoea.’ The word hung in the air like a floating stone.

The surgeon nodded and looked out far beyond the rails, as though he was trying to make out something moving in the darkness. ‘You frequented certain places, I expect?’

‘Once or twice. Many years ago.’

‘Mm. Of course, of course.’

‘Once while at Oxford. Night out with some fellows. Another time in the navy. A third time in London.’

‘We used to think gonorrhoea and syphilis were types of the same disorder. Blood relations, if you will. Now we know they’re not. Professor Ricord discovered the difference a few years ago now. In ’37 I believe. Rather brilliant Frenchman.’

‘What about my wife?’

‘I could break the news if you’d prefer. Or perhaps Mrs Derrington might be asked to step in. But naturally it would be better coming from yourself.’

‘She can’t know, Mangan. Not for the moment.’

‘Merridith, she might very well be carrying this herself. She – ’

‘We’re not intimate,’ he quietly interrupted. ‘Not for years now.’

A shadowed moon slid out from behind a vast cloud.

‘Nothing?’

He shook his head. ‘Our marriage is entirely celibate. I wanted to protect her. After I became infected before.’

‘Still.’ The surgeon sighed. ‘Latency can last from a month to a decade. Much longer, occasionally. She’s in very real danger. As is any other woman with whom you have been in familiar contact. Is there such a woman, Merridith? I beg you to be frank.’

The doctor took the silence as permission to continue.

‘There is a young woman among us on this ship whom you cannot mention without averting your eyes. We noticed it quite early, Mrs Derrington and I. And I have noticed that this young woman appears never to speak to you. Rather unusual for a servant and her master.’

‘What of it?’

‘You’ve had physical intercourse? Please speak frankly.’

‘No.’

‘But contact?’

‘There was – a time when I used go to her quarters at night.’

‘What occurred when you went there? I must know all.’

‘If you really must – she allowed me to watch as she prepared for bed.’

‘To undress?’

‘How the deuce else would she prepare for bed?’

‘Did you touch her body, Merridith? Did she touch yours?’

He looked at the face of his inquisitor, but no emotion was there. Suddenly he thought of the Roman Catholic confessional. Wasn’t this how they were questioned in that coffin-like little box? Always he had found it a strange idea, to tell your failings and lusts to another man, the most secret desires of your heart and body. Now he could see in it a kind of liberation. But no godliness. Quite the contrary.

‘I have touched her sometimes. Not in the way you mean.’

‘Not in the private sense?’

‘I have touched her body. She has not touched mine.’

‘You have not had intimate congress with the girl?’

‘I have answered you already.’

‘Never? Truly? You give me your word?’

He was crying again: very quietly and fearfully. The surgeon offered him a handkerchief but he shook his head and composed himself.

‘I speak as your friend, Merridith; not your judge.’

‘When we were younger we used to go walking about in the countryside together. At home, I mean. In Galway. I expect there were one or two occasions when we acted unwisely.’

‘You mean you had intercourse?’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean, then? Familiarities and so forth?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Mangan. Were you never a young person in love?’

Virgo singularis, inter omnes mites
,

nos culpis solutos, mites fac et castos
.

‘Do you love her still?’

‘I have very strong feelings. The feelings I have always had. I have not been in a position to live by those feelings.’

‘That is not what I mean, as I think you must know. I speak of love in the physical sense.’

‘Nothing of the nature to which you allude has happened in over fifteen years.’

‘And more recently? It’s been a matter of caresses and so forth?’

‘Yes.’

‘Exploration?’

‘If you must.’

‘Infiltration?’

‘No.’

‘There’s no question of manipulation of the self whilst in her company or anything of that nature? No emission of fluids?’

‘Mangan, can’t you leave it? What in Hell do you think I am?’

The surgeon spoke mildly but there was ice in his voice. ‘What I think you are is a man in a situation of power. As all men are, in relation to women.’

Vitam praesta puram, iter para tuum
.

‘Nothing has occurred which might put her in danger.’

‘You must never approach her in that way again. Do you understand?’

‘There is very little chance of that, I can assure you.’

‘May one ask how? I must insist on your guarantee. Otherwise it is my duty to have the girl removed from your quarters immediately.’

‘Mangan, I beg you –’

‘I will do my duty and that is an end to it. You must give me reason to think the girl is safe from your advances or I shall go to the Captain and have him allocate her a new cabin at once.’

‘Please don’t do that. I implore you, Mangan.’

‘Then speak, Merridith; for pity’s sake.’

He nodded. Turned slowly. Looked out at the ocean. The blackdark space where the waves must be. ‘There is a fact about my life which I have recently come to realise. A matter of enormous difficulty and shame. I have never discussed it with anyone before.’

‘Then you must now.’

‘I assume our conversation is confidential.’

‘Naturally.’

He hung his head suddenly as though he might vomit. Wind caught his hair and ripped at his clothes.